Saturday, May 7, 2016

Now Good Grammar is Racist

Bravo, regressive left.

It doesn’t matter of course that many people who are not white like good English grammar, or indeed that in many non-Western languages spoken all over the world good grammar and good standards of expression are supported by non-White people.

Of course, it would be but a short step from this dubious illogic to say that scientific truths – such as, say, the germ theory of disease? – are viciously racist and just a big conspiracy to oppressive the Third World by evil Western white male science.

Oh, wait, the lunatic Postmodernist scam artists already did this years ago, and just look at glorious results here and here.

Another of the constant memes of the regressive left, derived as it is from Postmodernism, is that we in the West live in a totally institutionally racist society characterised by the shocking evil of white privilege everywhere. On closer inspection, however, we quickly find that most of the arguments for this idea are couched in meaningless Postmodernist jargon and – despite the existence of some limited real racism here and there – the evidence for it is feeble at best.

Maybe I am missing something, but check out the evil white privilege right here.

32 comments:

So in a thread about "male privilege " on a website the leftists all insisted that the whole of western history was just unrelenting male privilege. I posted the famous photo of the D Day landing from the troop lander with the comment "Male privilege circa 1944". You would not believe the outrage and anger! I was a sexist fascist racist monster. I really don't think anyone had ever challenged their assumptions before.

Others are not -- especially sincere people in schools or universities who are hoping to help students master English, so that they can improve themselves, attain a higher level of education, and not be doomed to a life of poverty, unemployment or third rate, lousy employment, because they are functionally illiterate.

And even if there are "grammar snobs ... [who] use grammar to belittle people, to try to make them look stupid, and thereby invalidate their opinions and shut them up", this couldn't possibly refute the arguments for a standard grammar, spelling and punctuation in your language, and rigorous education in school to master your language.

She shouldn't have brought in the age and race aspects, I agree. But other than that she was "bang on the money." Being so technical about grammar ignores dialect, historical context, and personal expression. All her examples were of micro-managing about language. Very valid points.

Yep, facts speak for themselves. E.g., you are the same idiot anonymous who thinks (a) the Soviet Union still exists and (b) everyone who doesn't want war with Russia must be a Soviet agent or the product of Soviet subversion.

I watched the video.It seemed fine.Whether one agrees or disagrees, I saw no reason to be so offended by her ideas - it's just a differing opinion.

This post seems largely/strangely unrelated to the video and more just a reason to rant about how white people aren't racist any more, and how the 'regressive left' and pc police are ruining everything around us.

It's hard to criticise this post because it doesn't say much specific, it is mainly a vague rant that could just as easily fit in the comment section beneath the video.

Yeah, yeah, you want a world of hysterical left-wing lunatics who regard basic education -- or even disagreement -- as "racist" or "sexist" oppression.

You want a world of students who can't even be taught a standard English, so that they can improve themselves, attain a higher level of education, instead of being doomed to a life of poverty, unemployment or third rate, lousy employment, because they are functionally illiterate.

As for the "regressive left" and PC police, these bloody lunatics are ruining and destroying the left. You are just too stupid and too short-sighted to see it.

My answer... no. To all of what you said. It doesn't logically follow at all from what I said. So I'll ignore most of that empty rhetoric and posturing.

I'm guessing when you say 'the left' you mean the centre left.The left has always had a strong relationship with the whole 'context is all' approach, that's not hard to see. Ken B is correct, that's what the left is and has always been historically. Read some Mikhail Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Max Stirner, Daniel Guerin, Emma Goldman etc, even Trotsky. They discuss the ideas and history of that a lot. Even Chomsky would not regard you as a real leftist, take a look at his definitions or in fact just email him about it - very interesting.

You may as well join the centre right or just the centre, you are no different from a centrist. This blog is essentially a celebration of centrist ideas, and centre right ideas - you don't seem to hold the egalitarian influenced ethic of the left, more a kind of social meritocracy.At this point as far as I'm concerned you are centre or alt centre right. One can be alt centre right and hold ALL your views still,and of course centre.But being left with your ideas actually isn't quite so consistent, hence what much of your blogging rants are about.

"We just think that your ideas are intellectually bankrupt and are ruining any chance..."

Kain, what ideas of mine are you talking about exactly, mine specifically?

And how are they ruining any chance of political movements anywhere left of center, specifically the ideas of mine that you are referring to that are ruining chances?

Are you also willing to make the claim that post structuralist ideas have never lead to any political movement that was successful or productive throughout history?

(Also, disagreeing with anyone in these threads does not immediately make one a postmodernist, and in turn a stupid narrow minded person, which wouldn't logically follow anyway. But if it's the discourse that is so maddening, we can cut it out if you guys feel more comfortable with that - I'm cool to not share my opinions if that's easier for everyone - it just feels very 'Freedomain Radio forum section' when that happens)

but you are speaking in general you dont make examples of something specific if you would we will gladly debate that.

also i dont see much usefulness from post structurlist ideas,its a mirage which attract people into radical identity politics instead of thinking about things which matter way more than radical identity politics (identity politics is important but its have its own limit) and i am speaking about economics of course and left economic policies (left in the sense of keyensian economics not marxian).

In regard to discourse, was just surprised, all over the internet, people get so worked-up about this kind of discussion.

I agree with your comments about usefulness, I also am not quite so sure how useful much of it is for me - but in terms of usefulness, or let's call it utility, it is of great utility for a great many people. No time to delve into all the examples, but to quote a major critic of post-modern thought, Paul Boghossian,“At its best – as in the work of de Beauvoir and Appiah – social constructionist thought exposes the contingency of those of our social practices that we had wrongly come to regard as inevitable. It does so by relying on the standard canons of good scientific reason. It goes astray when it aspires to become either a general metaphysics or a general theory of knowledge”,

Post-modernism has its many variants, in its hardest forms it is a strict approach to reality being made up of only social constructions (the only one people seem to discuss).In its softer forms it is largely a form of agnosticism.Soft post-modernism allows for there to be an objective reality, an objective moral standard, an objective holocaust event (Hitler card is dropped a lot online). It takes a soft anti-realist approach - there is skepticism towards the idea that we can trust our senses to give us access to objective reality with confidence - our senses, biology, language, cognitive states, etc are heavily influenced, and contingent on huge degree of social factors.

Taxonomy is also a very interesting subject regarding social construction and soft-postmodernism.

Now, even if you disagree with these ideas (I am not in total agreement with them, though I regard it to be plausible), do you regard that to be plausible Daniel?

Your thoughts on this? if you have some time.

Regarding LK, comment section and free speech - you only see the comments that make it through.

its divided into 2 things i believe scientific subjectivism and cultural social subjectivism.

1.about scientific subjectivsim well i dont think you are right,asian eye middle eastern eye and western eye will see the same thing like a different types of cameras.

if you are an asian with asian culture it will not make you see how a rock fly instead of fall when you are throwing it on the ground.

if you are middle eastern with middle eastern culture it will not make you think you are in a world with no gravitation on earth.

so the difference here i believe is in metaphysics.

and metaphysics dont play key role in science in the sense that termodynamic laws cant be influenced by metaphysics newton laws cant be influenced by metaphysics.

and most of the scientific laws and engineering technologies have nothing to do with metaphysics.

the only things that have something to do with metaphysics is if (big if) we are speaking about things so beyond our understanding like the questions what causedthe big bang which have nothing to do with the common folk.

and even about this things i am not sure

so even though different people and cultures and religons may have different metaphysical understanding of the world its still not really influence most of the matters of science and engineering laws that we have.

and the things that metaphyiscs may be important in them is something that most of the people and scientists dont even study and research and in this case its something that relevant only for a small amount of people and scientists.

now about cultural subjectivism maybe there is no better or worse culture maybe there is no good or evil.

but i know that western liberal values and culture produced higher technological advance than say middle eastern muslim culture ( i am not speaking about mid ages but about modern era) or african nations.

the western liberal values and culture produced countries with better human rigths record (maybe human rights is subjective issue but i think that is something dear to you as well not only for me) the same goes with democracy there is more western liberal countries with democracy than middle eastern or african or even east asian countries.

so even if the matter is subjective there is a lot of achievements which many people will apperciate in the western culture and liberal values of the western world achievements which will people like you apperciate.

and i dont think that to be biased in favour of western culture in this case is something horrible yes i am biased i never said i am an ojbective person but its legitimate to be biased in this way and to think that western civilization is worthy and to look at the world from the point of view and interests of the western world.

now i am not saying that its ok to impose western liberal values on the world (i am not a neocon) but if people come to western countries in hope of shelter first of all its legitimate to ask this people to accept western culture and to adopt their religions and traditions in line with western liberal thought.

second its legitimate preserve western liberal culture and i dont see a good reason to impose open borders on people and multiculturism specially when the people who come to this countries coming to this countries because they like the lifestyle in this country they enjoy the security of personal freedoms and economic security in this countries and in this case it will not be a bad thing to ask them to assimilate and respect western world values and culture and built their cultural developments in line with western liberal thought.

Thanks, great response! :)I had some trouble understanding some of what you wrote… (which is funny as this is a grammar related comment section, haha) but from what I saw it sounded like you expressed a consistent set of ideas.I think maybe you were discussing the ethics (or ‘oughts’) of why western culture is to be adopted.

I was talking about something more simple though, which is that ‘soft postmodernism’ is plausible and can be defended. It is the view that there is an objective reality, objective standards etc, but our vehicles to access that reality (our language, beliefs, context, arguments) fluctuate very heavily with culture, but even biology - i.e through natural selection, it is possible, we may have absolutely favoured insincerity over truth, or just partially so.

That is all. There is more to it of course but overall although it may be annoying, it isn’t so implausible.

Many arguments (but not all) about race, culture, etc, you see in ‘hard postmodernism’ can flow from this base instead, it is a much stronger base.

You seem to hold a ethical utilitarian view, would I be correct?

If you do hold a traditional utilitarian view, you would be interested in maximizing the good for the most amount of people without any regard to who they are and whether they hold western values or not (or any cultural compatibility etc), as happiness would be the only factor (for Jeremy Bentham anyway, for Mill there was a happiness hierarchy).Under such a view, adopting western culture would only hold as moral if it was to maximize the good (happiness) for the most amount of people.

But you will see a lot of anti-politically correct, anti-feminist, anti-‘regressive’ etc types saying they hold traditional utilitarian views but not realizing that they might have to uproot their convictions for the popular will - if they are interested in doing what is right, and not seeming to recognise the importance of how a person feels and how that impacts their own ethical framework.

yes this kind of science which is social science can be affected by your cultural and religious background.

but here is what i tried to say we should consider how benefitical been a culture and values on the society which accepted it.

if its benefitical create prosperity stability and etc thats means its working and its should be adopted if not than its not recommended to adopt it.

so my point is in this case not to try to sattisfy what people think will make them happy (aka popular) but what is practically work and indeed make them happy in the long run even though they may not understand it by themself (and of course they may understand it its depends on the person).

Interesting, good points.I guess we agree with each other in the core ideas.And yes, objective reality does exist. :D

Either way, my issue often is with the anti-feminist, anti-politically-correct, anti-regressive-left rhetoric.I find the majority of the arguments from that sub-culture to be hugely lacking in substance.

They present zero peer reviewed studies in support of how the ‘regressive left is destroying everything’. A few studies showing how ‘social justice warriors’ do more harm than good would be sufficient, but instead they just say “Just look around. Our universities are being ruined!”. When you push them to present a collection of convincing studies on that, they just get emotional and call you ‘stupid’.I’ve seen too many times people promoting free-speech, but then supporting Sargon of Akkad’s petition to ban courses at universities that he doesn’t like - once again no studies backing his position.Just a request for the state to ban people from learning. Plus, he’s not even sure what the courses contain - he literally just wants education banned because it might be a part of the thing that he doesn’t like. Also, these courses are voluntary, this isn’t compulsory education.

If it was a well known feminist calling for a ban in these same subjects - people would go ballistic and Sargon of Akkad would be doing a critical video about it.

Below is the link:https://www.change.org/p/universities-suspend-social-justice-in-universities

He represents the pinnacle of this rotten type of leftism (I actually don’t even consider this leftism).In fact, if you have time to listen to this debate, I posted below, he has with a young philosophy student that is a feminist.

His arguments over the whole stream are extremely weak. She’s actually debating with 2 people (and quite frankly wiping the floor with them), then a third guy comes in at like 2hr 40 mins point, and he is a complete disaster.

Reading Sargon’s own comment section, from his own fans, talking about how bad they thought he did - is entertaining reading (for me :D).

and its depends on what happening in europe right now and how severe will be the influx of refugees with non western/liberal values.

if it will continue and the flow of refugees will be strong enough the media and post modernist propoganda machine will not able to whitewash anymore the tensions between the native population and refugees and it will not able to whitewash refugees hostile bias toward western liberal values,and then post modernism and regressive leftism will eventually die.

but if the influx of refugees will stop the post modernist propoganda machine will whitewash the tensions and the anti liberal/western bias of some of the refugees and the anti liberal western bias of their culture.

and this is dangerous turn because in this case they will show EU and germany as multucultural integration open borders success story,while whitewashing all of the negative outcome of this policy and in this case regressive left will become stronger than ever before.